Tauromachy

Drag me up the roofs, bull,

push me through the floors;

I will break the boards,

stain the wood,

and when I try to shape my mouth

I blow a bubble with right angles:

I cannot speak but with my hands,

those roving birds that court south.

Oh, you are yoked, you are rooted,

but I have seen you chase vermilion,

your twin horns balancing oblivion,

your nimble hooves confused

and accidentally crushing.

I may spill the pail,

empty the grail

and still you will never end up with nothing.

Why would you need the filling of a lover?

I will be the one tipped over and cracked,

perhaps,

as your toes stay wreathed in clover.

10 Washington Place

Here are yellow curves,

orange cubes, a floor of suede

and dimmed reflections on the floor,

marbled. The stairs drop

like a Jacob's ladder. One wall

is shapely, the other bricked;

trios of lights harmonious,

seven suns, black-and-white and glorious.

Columns hold up the ceiling

like verbs, attached to phrases

at both ends. Speckles and

moving squares like adjectives,

decorative, and I can sit on these

nouns as if they were couches

and chairs. The walls glassed.

(Language, here, is glassed.)

A hushing building, the air filled

with invisible words, unyelled.

washington square after a rain

somehow the benches are dry,

somehow the world is pastels

and the clouds are soft, the

air is soft; somehow the

quiet pervades, pervades;

dogs are walked, smiles

are swapped (some brighter

than others, some bright

as the hiding, peeping sun);

and when somebody has a

diabetic seizure while he's

playing the guitar, cover

songs, the paramedics

come in the sleepy calm

of after-rain and move

unhurriedly, professionals

don't hurry... and meanwhile

the two men on the bench

next to mine, one white

and old, one black and young,

talk, too, unhurriedly; they talk

of children and of bedtimes

and of how no one wants to

have a seizure in the park when

it's such a nice day.

Yoga

New Age music is on in Coles and

the flabby women soon to be draping naked in the

locker room splay obscenely with heavy

rotten breaths beside you, cobra,

cat, pyramid, hold it --

breathe in, breathe out like a

moron -- nothing further from

exotic Gandhic philosophies thought up

in a language you don't read.

Perhaps if it were done

in a world pretending to be India --

asanas on East Fourteenth Street or on Canal Street,

put in the street vendors but

pay them to yell and to hawk,

arch the bridge in the middle of the intersection of

Houston East First and Avenue A with

taxicabs honking and bikes swerving surprised at the veering shapes of the street --

breathe in, breathe out.

Know that love can only be reached after you leap the channels of risk.

Man in a White Hat

Our lives

seeds in maracas, tapping...

 

Aged eyes, crinkled skin, black

man in a white hat, I

saw you helping the shrunken white zinnia, I saw you in

the library, I saw you again walking by;

 

when you said "hi" I felt nervous though I'd already smiled

that mouthless smile of glass girls five feet tall,

wallets uncasually guarded, black

man in a white hat coming from somewhere, feet leading, eyes watchful,

 

looking classy in that white hat.

While you are dreaming

While you are dreaming,

While you are awakening,

While you are standing on glistening tile,

While you are brewing,

While you are switching on the vent,

While you are reading headlines,

While you are filling in the two answers in the crossword that you know off the top of your head,

While you are stopping at a stop sign,

While you are running a stop sign,

While you are turning right at a red light,

While you are tapping your fingers on the steering wheel,

While you are reading the personalized license places,

While you are finding a song on the radio that you know,

While you are humming along because you don't quite know the words,

While you are parallel parking,

While you are working,

While you are worrying,

While you are making a call,

While you are laughing,

While you are looking at the menu,

While you are ordering,

While you are calculating tip,

While you are paying with your debit card,

While you are checking your watch,

While you are checking your email,

While you are feeling the breeze or lack of breeze against your cheek,

While you are thinking about the one you never called back,

While you are smoking a cigarette,

While you are whistling,

While you are driving home,

While you are narrowly avoiding an accident because somebody else ran a stop sign,

While you are cleaning your windshield with the wipers and the fluid so convenient,

While you are fumbling with your keys,

While you are microwaving,

While you are doing the dishes,

While you are flipping channels,

While you are examining hairs,

While you are undressing,

While you are unmaking the bed,

While you are making love,

While you are praying,

While you are sleeping and dreaming again...

 

All the while Niagara runs,

All the while Niagara falls,

The water changing color when it vaults into the air,

The roars of nature's forces colliding and combining,

Sometimes making rainbows, always making mist,

Greater than time, the celebration, the power unending.